Collected Poems 1935

The Sibyl of Cumae was loved in her youth by Apollo, who offered to grant any wish she might express. She asked to live as many years as there were grains in a certain heap of dust, but forgot to ask for enduring youth. This too would have been granted her, if she had accepted Apollo’s love. Refusing it, she lived on to become a prophetess, and at last only a voice, haunting her cave at Cumae.

On his way back from Syria, Richard Cœur de Lion was taken prisoner by Leopold of Austria, and held to ransom for nearly two years. This poem is suggested by a song, ‘Ja nus hom pris’, which he composed in captivity.

The title and theme come from Les Congiés, a poem of several hundred lines by Jean Bodel, a poet of Arras in the early thirteenth century. Having become a leper, he took farewell of his friends in these verses; a selection and translation are given by André Mary in La Fleur de la Poésie Française, Paris, 1951.

Strambotti have not been written in English since Sir Thomas Wyatt introduced them from Italy. He translated several from Serafino dell’ Aquila, and also used the form for some epigrams referring to his own career. Strambotti became fashionable in Italy in the fifteenth century, after a Venetian nobleman, Leonardo Giustinian, had used them to combine themes from folk-song with a more delicate formal discipline. Giustinian’s collection of twenty-seven strambotti was printed towards the end of the fifteenth century (see Leonardo Giustinian, by Manlio Dazzi, Bari, 1934); but these poems were widely known and sung earlier. Collections of folk-songs made in Italy in the nineteenth century, such as Tigri’s Canti Popolari Toscani, show that peasants were still singing rispetti and other poems of the kind Giustinian knew.

I have revised the text printed in 1970, lightly in some places, heavily in others. My use of the five-line stanza was suggested by Shelley’s Peter Bell the Third.
The ‘imperfect saint’ of Section III is Angela of Foligno, who died in 1308. My information comes from a study by Louis Leclève.

The limits of my knowledge and understanding of Hasidism will be obvious. If the poem finds any Jewish readers I hope they will be indulgent, and bear in mind that I have had to approach the subject from within a different religious tradition.
My information has come chiefly from the following books:

Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim The Early Masters (London, 1956)

Tales of the Hasidim The Later Masters (New York, 1948)

Louis I. Newman, The Hasidic Anthology (New York, 1944)

Gershom G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (London, 1955)

Jean de Menasce, Quand Israël Aime Dieu (Paris, 1931)

Louis I. Newman, Maggidim and Hasidim: Their Wisdom (New York, 1962)

Louis Jacobs, Hasidic Prayer (London, 1972)

In the following notes I have not been able to gloss every reference.

Title: ‘Plates are some times engraved in pure dry-point with the bur left ready to catch the printer’s ink. This is not really etching…. But it is an etcher’s process.
‘The reader must not think of dry-point as a thin and meagre art. It may be made to look very rich…. The hand is not nearly so free as it is in etching, and this objection, together with the serious one that dry-points will not safely yield large editions, has caused etchers’ dry-point to be much neglected.’ (P. G. Hamerton, Etching and Etchers, London, 1876, p. 440.)

7 I. 1: I am thinking of names such as Elimelech of Lizhensk (d. 1786), Aaron of Karlin (d. 1772), etc.

8 I. 2: yeshivahs: local institutions for Talmudic studies.

9 I. 3: Dov Baer: a disciple of the Baal Shem, d. 1772.
Maggid: preacher.

10 I. 4: Shekhinah: ‘divine hypostasis indwelling in the world and sharing the exile of Israel; Divine Presence among men’ (‘The Later Masters’, p. 336).
Other references in this section are to Martin Buber, The Legend of the Baal-Shem (London, 1956) and Newman, The Hasidic Anthology, p. 57.

11 II. 1: see ‘The Early Masters’, p. 64.
zaddik: ‘the leader of the Hasidic community’ (Buber).
the Besht: the Baal Shem Tov (1700–60), the founder of Hasidism; see ‘The Early Masters’, p. 78, and Scholem, p. 330.

12 II. 2, 3: These sections draw on Scholem’s account of Sabbatianism and the origins of Hasidism (pp. 287–334). As Scholem explains in discussing the Zohar and Sabbatianism, the conceptions of the ‘holy sparks’ and the kelipoth are interdependent. The Zohar interprets evil as ‘a sort of residue or refuse of the hidden life’s organic process’ (p. 238); one of the metaphors conveying this doctrine is that of ‘evil as the Kelipah, or the “bark” of the cosmic tree or the “shell” of the nut’ (p. 239). Isaac Luria (1514–72), developed the idea of ‘the fall of divine “sparks of light” from the divine realm to the lower depths’ (p. 268); there they are imprisoned in the kelipoth or ‘shells’, from which they have to be liberated by human effort, if ‘the ideal order’ of creation is to be restored.

13 II. 3: Sabbatai Zevi: 1625–76. He proclaimed himself Messiah and drew many followers; but apostatised to Islam after being imprisoned by the Ottomans. According to Scholem, ‘he was the living archetype of the paradox of the holy sinner’ (see pp. 289–94).
Torah: ‘teaching, law, both the written (biblical) and the oral (traditional) law’ (Buber).

14 II. 4: kawannoth: plural of kawannah, ‘the intention directed towards God while performing a (religious) deed’ (Buber). See Scholem, p. 275; and Jacobs, chapters III and VI.

15 Bunam: Simha Bunam of Parsischa, d. 1827. See ‘The Later Masters’, p. 240.

16 III. 1: Messiah son of Joseph: ‘a Messiah who will prepare the way…. Another tradition holds that he reappears “from generation to generation”’ (Buber). See ‘The Later Masters’, p. 151.

17 III. 3: Jacob Joseph of Polnoye: d. about 1775; a disciple of the Besht.
Yisakhar Baer: d. 1843.

18 III. 4: Zevi Hirsh: of Zhydatchov; d. 1831. For the reference to Isaac, see Genesis, 24.63.

19 III. 5: the Yehudi: ‘the Jew’; Yaakov Yitzhak of Parsischa, d. 1814.
Kalman of Cracow: d. 1823. He was a disciple of Elimelech of Lizhensk and ‘the Seer’ of Lublin (see below, IV. 4).
Shelomo Leib: of Lentshno; d. 1843.
III. 6: the Rabbi of Opatov (Apt): Abraham Yehoshua Heshel: d. 1822. See ‘The Later Masters,” p. 120.

20 III. 7: Hayyim of Zans: d. 1876.

21 IV. 1: mitnaggedim: ‘the avowed opponents of Hasidism’ (Buber).
‘Germans’: see ‘The Later Masters’, p. 240.
Poles: see ‘The Early Masters’, p. 188.

22 IV. 2: ‘It is so’: see Buber, The Legend of the Baal-Shem, p. 174. ‘I have a secret’: see Dobh Baer of Lubavitch, Tract on Ecstasy‚ translated by Louis Jacobs (London, 1968), pp. 57, 175. The author was a godson of Dov Baer of Mesritch (see I. 3). The Tract is a theory and vindication of ecstatic prayer.

23 IV. 4: Menahem Mendel: of Kotzk; d. 1859. See ‘The Later Masters’, pp. 39–43 and 270–89; and Scholem, p. 345.
the Rabbi of Lublin: Yaakov Yitzhak, ‘the Seer’; d. 1815. See ‘The Early Masters’, pp. 300–18.

24 IV. 5: Schneor Zalman: of Ladi; d. 1813. He was ‘the Rav’ of Northern White Russia. See ‘The Early Masters’, pp. 265–72.

25 V. 2: the son of Jesse: See Newman, The Hasidic Anthology, pp. 247–8.
Israel of Rizhyn: d. 1850. See ‘The Later Masters’, pp. 15–16; and Scholem, p. 337.

26 Afterword on Rupert Brooke

The main sources are Christopher Hassall’s biography (1964) and Sir Geoffrey Keynes’s edition of the Letters (1968).
The verse is syllabic, in the measure of twelve syllables devised by Robert Bridges. His best-known poem in this metre is The Testament of Beauty (1930). But Poor Poll (1921) was his first illustration of its potentialities, and is the best guide to its structure. I have allowed myself fewer ‘elisions’ than one finds in The Testament of Beauty, and aimed at a greater variety of rhythm.

27 A Last Attachment

The manuscript of Sterne’s Journal to Eliza was discovered in the nineteenth century and first printed in 1904. It was written between April and August, 1767. In June of that year Sterne set to work on the Sentimental Journey, which appeared in February 1768, a month before his death.
Eliza was 22 when Sterne met her in the winter of 1766. At the age of 14 she had been married to Daniel Draper, an official of the East India Company in Bombay. She had two children by him, who came to England with her in 1765 and were left there at school when she returned to India in 1767. She eventually left her husband and came to England, where she died in 1778.

28 The Yüan Chên Variations

The sequence is based on translations of poems by Po Chü-i, which appear in Arthur Waley’s A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems and More Translations from the Chinese. The use I have made of Waley’s versions is the best expression I can give of my admiration for his work.
   Po Chü-i was born in A.D. 772 and died in 846. His friendship with Yüan Chên, who was a few years younger than himself, appears in poems written throughout his life.
   Ch‘ang-an (Sections 1 and 2) was at that time the capital of China. Chiang-ling (Section 1) and Lan-t’ien (Section 2) are associated with Yüan Chên’s period of exile beginning in 805. Po Chü-i passed through Chiu-k’ou (Section 3) when he went into exile in Hsün-yang in 815. Lu Shan (Section 4) is a famous mountain within reach of Hsün-yang.
   Wei-chih (Sections 1 and 4) and Lo-t’ien (Section 4) are other names of Yüan Chên and Po Chü-i. Han-lang (Section 1) is the familiar name of another close friend, Ts’ui Hsüan-liang.
   Each set of stanzas or ‘variation’ has a different arrangement of rhymes and line-lengths. The basic or notional lines have either four syllables and two stresses, or six syllables and three stresses. But the four-syllable lines are varied by lines of five, and the six-syllable lines by lines of seven (not counting the extra syllable in double rhymes).
   The Yüan Chên Variations was first published by the Sheep Meadow Press in New York in 1981.
   I am grateful to Stanley Moss for detailed comments which helped towards a final version.

29 His Dog and Pilgrim

Painting and statues of St Rock (St Roch, San Rocco, San Roque) show him dressed as a pilgrim. He uncovers a plague-sore on his thigh, and may be accompanied by a dog.
Rock is said to have set out on a pilgrimage to Rome at about the age of twenty, from his birthplace Montpellier. On his way through Italy he nursed and cured many victims of the plague, but was himself infected, and lay ill alone in the forest near Piacenza. Here he was fed by a dog, which brought him every day a piece of bread from its master’s table, and he recovered.
In my poem Rock takes the dog as companion when he goes on pilgrimage, and his powers as a patron saint and protector against the plague follow his own miraculous recovery.

30 A Byron-Shelley Conversation

p. 238 lines 23–25: ‘Worlds on worlds …’ See Hellas (1822), 11. 197–200.
p. 240 line 25: ‘coarse music’: see Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Frederick L. Jones, vol. II (1964), p. 436.
p. 242 lines 9–10: ‘Great is their love …’ see Heaven and Earth (1823), Part I, Scene I, line 67.
p. 242 line 12; ‘sweet degradation’: see Cain (1821), Act II, Scene I, line 56.

31 Walks in Rome

The verse is based on the line-lengths established in The Yüan Chên Variations; see the note on page 310 above. But here and in A Byron-Shelley Conversation the line-lengths are used more freely, the rhymes are not arranged in regular patterns, and the sentences flow from one stanza to another. The effects go back beyond the regular iambic rhythms which became normal in English verse after Surrey, and are closer to the movement of such poems by Wyatt as “Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind.”

32 ‘Myne olde dere En’mye, my froward master’
is the first line of a poem by Sir Thomas Wyatt,
which is translated from a canzone by Petrarch beginning
Quell’ antiquo mio dolce empio signore.

33 Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam.

34 Nahman of Bratslav (1772–1810) was one of the later Hasidic masters. See The Hasidic Anthology (New York, 1944) pp. 104, 105.

35 Family Mottoes

Most of the mottoes I have used can be found in Fairbairn’s Crests of the Families of Great Britain and Ireland (New Orchard Editions, Poole, Dorset, 1986). A few come from a A Dictionary of Mottoes, ed. L. G. Pine. (1983).

The following notes give the names of the families whose mottoes are quoted, unless the name appears in the text of the poem.

	(i)		Rushout.
	(ii)		Balcarres, Lindsay. Poor.
			De Lyle, Lyle, Montgomery.
			Hislop.
			“Deccan”: a region of Southern India which in the eighteenth century was the scene first of rivalry between the British and the French, and later of British campaigns against the Marathas.
	(iv)		Boughton, Powell.
			Lumisden, Lumsden, Lundin.
			Duncombe. Fulton.
	(vi)		Foote.
			Cunningham.
	(vii)		Cadogan.
			Spottiswood, Spotswood.
			Birt, Gwynee.
	(viii)		Cameron, Howie, Paterson, Steuart, Stewart.
	(ix)		Egerton, Jobb, Jopp.
			Crawford.
			Landen, Scrogie.
			Spurdens.
	(x)		Giffard.
	(xi)		MacMoran, M’Morran.
	(xii)		Forbes.
	(xiii)		Middleton.
	(xiv)		Courtenay.
	(xv)		Howard (Earls of Carlisle), Greystock.
	(xvii)		Edgar.
	(xviii)		Reith.
	(xix)		Amos, Meredith, Parker, Wise, Wyse.
			Birney, Burnie, Burney, Claxson.
			Hesse.
	(xx)		Gordon.
			Dies non is short for dies non juridicus, a law term for a day on which no legal business is transacted.
	(xxi)		Lowes.

36 The Two Beggars

In Yeats’s dance-play The Cat and the Moon (1926) a blind beggar carries a lame beggar on his shoulders as they go in search of a miraculous spring.

Notes

Notes